Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Boudoir Photoshoot with Kat and Uilani

A week after the shoot with Lia, Heidi and Uilani, Kat contacted me to set up a second shoot with Uilani. We shot three different looks - two boudoir style and a fashion look.

For the boudoir look, I wanted to try something different with the set this time. We setup an inflatable bed with a comforter cover and cream colored satin sheets. For the background we hung white tulle from a pole supported by 2 C-stands, and four wooden folding closet door panels.

Behind the panels we setup two B800s with Rosco 305 gels and aimed them through the slats of the doors to emulate sunlight streaming in from the outside.

To help make it look more like a bedroom, we put a nightstand with a lamp next to the bed. To get light from the lamp to match the flash units we were using, we replaced the light bulb in the lamp with an SB26 fitted with a Stofen omnibounce. Because the SB26 has a built in optical slave, it fired reliably whenever the main light fired.

Ran out of closet door panels for the background, so we used one of the white V-flats to stand in for a wall.

For the main light, we used an AB800 with a 5ft Octodome boomed above the front of the bed with a C-stand. The power level was controlled via a wired Alien Bees LG4X controller.

For fill, we added a 4x8 silver litepanel just below the front of the bed. Below is what we ended up with:

When we started shooting, we noticed that on some poses because of the overhead position of the Octodome, we were getting a shadow on Uilani's chest. To help raise the shadow area, we had Quddus hold another SB 26 aimed Uilani's face and neck. As she changed poses, Quddus would also move and readjust to keep the light aimed correctly.

Canon 5d iso100 70-200mm f2.8L 1/125 @ f8

Canon 5d iso100 70-200mm f2.8L 1/125 @ f8

Canon 5d iso100 70-200mm f2.8L 1/125 @ f8

Uilani changed outfits and after Kat changed the makeup look, we shot another set, this time shooting with the intention of converting to black & white / sepia:

Canon 5d iso100 70-200mm f2.8L 1/125 @ f8

Canon 5d iso100 70-200mm f2.8L 1/125 @ f8

Canon 5d iso100 70-200mm f2.8L 1/125 @ f8

For our final setup we headed out into the hallway upstairs. Near the upstairs landing, one of the walls had a section of glass brick, with sunlight coming in from outside.

To make this a deep blue color, we setup an AB800 with a beauty dish and 2 CTO gels (full and 1/2 cut). Tried setting the camera to tungsten white balance , which would change the outdoor light to blue, but wasn't getting the right color tone I wanted. Then I tried dialing it in manually with the Kelvin setting on the camera, but it only let me dial it down to about 2700K. Iwanted it to go a tad more but because this was really pushing the camera color to its limits, my 5D basically said to me "hey, cut that out" and I had to make do with that. Because we were shooting in RAW, we could later go into Lightroom and bring down the white balance even further than what the camera would allow.

For fill, we used a silver photoflex litepanel. As you can see from the picture, the section of glass brick is only 9 bricks wide, so there wasn't much room to play with. Uilani had a very limited area in which she could pose for this set.

Canon 5d iso100 70-200mm f2.8L 1/160 @ f7.1

Using the 70-200L helped compress the space and hide the edges of the glass brick wall. Also shooting at 1/160th allowed me to drop the light level of the outside light coming in, which resulted in a darker blue background.